An automated analyzer adds a reagent specifically reacting with a specific component contained in a biological sample such as blood or urine, causes the reagent to react with the specific component, and measures an absorbance and an amount of luminescence of a reaction liquid, thereby performing quantitative/qualitative analysis.
Generally, the automated analyzer includes a reagent container depository that can store a plurality of reagents corresponding to a plurality of analysis items so as to enable the analysis to be performed with respect to the plurality of analysis items. An analyzer management operator mounts reagents necessary for analysis of a day in the reagent container depository in advance. However, if shortage of reagents occurs during the analysis, the operator interrupts the analysis to replace the reagent.
Meanwhile, the number of analysis items for the automated analyzer has recently increased, and the number of automated analyzers that can mount many reagent containers by downsizing each reagent container so as to serve as analyzers compatible with analysis having many analysis items has increased. If the number of reagent containers mounted in the analyzer increases, it is highly likely that the shortage of reagents occurs, compared with a conventional analyzer. To address the problem, there is known an automated analyzer including a mechanism that can automatically add a reagent container to a reagent container depository (see, for example, Patent Document 1).